Hidden In Paris Part 5

"I can't very well ask her to take a cab, can I?"

"I don't see why not."

"I want things to go smoothly. I want them to feel welcome and at ease."

"What about me being at ease?"

She pushed Lucas with both hands toward the garage and she let him lift the metal curtain. "Let's air out the monster, see if it can still roar." Lucas turned toward her looking offended. "I hope you are not referring to my private anatomy."

In a few minutes, they would be at the international gate where Annie had come off the plane as a newlywed. Had she really once been the kind of person who flew over oceans, drove in unknown cities, moved to new countries?

"I am missing work for this?" Lucas said. "I just don't see why you could not drive on your own."

"I don't feel capable of driving, I told you a million times that I'm not ready."

"You are capable," he said. "And you're ready."

"When I'm ready to drive, you'll be the first one informed."

Later on, as she stood in the dense crowd that faced the international gate at Charles De Gaulle Airport where Lola and her children should have appeared a long time ago, she was back to feeling more antic.i.p.ation than fear. There were people everywhere, people doing things, going places and she was right in the thick of the action. She was waiting for an unknown woman to become part of her life. She could not help but feel proud of herself for breaking that spell with the van, and for making this tremendous plunge towards the unknown.

But an hour after the airplane was shown to have landed, there was still no sign of Lola. The colorful pageant of people and families from every country, race, nationality and social stratum had stopped being interesting a long time ago and she was back to being tormented by stomach upset and cold sweats. She scrutinized the crowd till her eyes hurt. What did they look like? Could she possibly have missed them? There must have been dozens of mothers traveling with children. Had she not seen her sign? Annie no longer had the gumption to hold up the cute little homemade sign she had coerced Paul and Laurent into constructing. Children's letters and coloring. Cute as a b.u.t.ton. The idea behind the sign was to give a warmer, more friendly reception than the one she felt capable of voicing.

She turned to Lucas. "Could they have missed their connection?" Lucas, still busy feeling sorry for himself, only shrugged. "s.h.i.t, this is not normal. Maybe this is the wrong airport! Lucas, please, make sure we're in the right place. This could be a disaster. And I'm begging you to stop giving me the cold shoulder! This is stressful enough." Dragging his feet, Lucas went to ask. She wanted to wring his neck.

She now had to push and shove to remain in the front row because the crowd had grown for the arrival of international travelers who were making their way slowly up the ramp. She was beginning to feel claustrophobic in the stench of sweat, perfume, and cigarette smoke that engulfed them all.

Faces-hundreds of faces, strange faces-lit up when they recognized someone familiar. Saris, suits, turbans, shorts, and flip-flops. People pushing carts covered in mountains of mismatched parcels and luggage. Everyone looked so strange. One woman caught Annie's attention. She was quite an incongruity, a stunning woman with high cheekbones, a pale face and dark gla.s.ses. She could have been six feet tall or appeared to be amid this rather low-rising crowd of French, Asian, and Arabic men and women. She wore her black hair closely cropped, her face was chiseled, her lips very full, and her skin like porcelain seemed to glow from the inside. Annie wasn't the only one to gawk. The oversized sungla.s.ses and the floor-length, mocha-colored cashmere coat, mocha cashmere turtleneck, and mocha cashmere boots made her look like she might have been a model in the midst of a photo shoot. Annie racked her brain for a clue and forgot all about what she was here for. Surely this was someone famous, maybe a French actrice. Not Chiara Mastroianni, not Carla Bruni...the woman continued walking up the ramp and pushing a cart piled high with Vuitton bags.

It was only when she pa.s.sed right by that Annie noticed that a toddler and a girl of about nine were at her side, both children beautiful and as blond as the woman was dark-haired. And suddenly it hit her. Lola? The shock of this realization hit her at the same instant as the enormity of the disaster struck her. Quick! Toss the sign into the crowd! Sprint out of the airport, and run, run, across fields and across towns all the way home? There was still time. "Down to earth" she had told Lucas to describe Lola. Not from this earth was more like it. But Lola had sounded so normal over the phone.

She looked anything but normal. It was as if Wonder Woman had landed in the airport with her skin-tight American flag outfit and her golden la.s.so. This was impossible. Impossible! This woman, this creature would find a hotel, she'd find another home, she'd find another place in which to start over or whatever h.e.l.lish reason she was here for. She needed to turn around and go right back into the pages of Vogue from which she came. She'd be absolutely fine. She'd be absolutely better off. This woman did not belong in her world, in her life and she sure as h.e.l.l didn't belong in her house.

But instead, Annie found herself elbowing, pushing, and shoving to make her way toward Lola, and lifting her homemade rickety little sign high, wriggling it pathetically and wailing "excuse me, excuse me." Terrible humiliation ensued. Lola kept staring right above the sign. There she was, plump and barely over five-feet tall on her tiptoes right next to a G.o.ddess who could not see her! Finally, Annie practically shoved the sign in the woman's face, cleared her throat. Her voice came out, high on helium, "Lola?"

Lola looked down, the African gazelle to the aardvark, recognized her name on the sign. She looked at her through her impenetrable sungla.s.ses. "Annie?" The crowd moved in slow motion. "Welcome to France!" Annie said in one hysterical breath, and the world resumed normal speed. "I was worried sick about you. What happened?"

Lola took off her gla.s.ses. She had beautiful pale green eyes and looked like she had been crying. She bent down slightly to speak closer to Annie's ear. "They held us up at immigration," she whispered. "We looked suspect to them, I guess, a single mom with two kids. They were rude and..."

Her little boy wailed "Mom, up me, up me!" He was pulling on her arm. She looked at Annie and her eyes filled with tears. "For a moment there, I thought they wanted to send us back. Then, suddenly, for no reason, they let us go. I don't get it."

Annie was entirely confused by Lola's vulnerability. "There is nothing to get, honey," she said, patting Lola on the sleeve of her soft coat. "Welcome to the best France has to offer, starting with abuse of power and arbitrary decisions. You're going to love it!"

"Right now, all I am is terrified," Lola whispered even lower. "I'm so thankful to see a friendly face."

"Me?" Annie said.

Six feet tall women in cashmere have nothing to fear, she thought. But Lola did look terrified. "Your worries are over now," Annie said, believing herself. "I'm going to take care of you and your adorable children." She turned to Lola's children and gave them a wide smile destined to convey warmth and motherly self-confidence. The girl's face was scrunched up and closed and she did not make eye contact. The boy was hanging on to his mother's coat with both hands now and looked like he was going to climb up the coat like a monkey. Lola lifted him into her arms and the boy buried his face in her neck. "I bet you can't wait to get to your new home!" Annie said with all the jolliness she could muster.

"Our vacation home," Lola whispered and looked at Annie worriedly.

"Your nice vacation home, of course," Annie said. "Do you know I have a boy your age? I have three boys, in fact."

"I hate boys," Lia shrugged, "They're stupid."

"Not mine. They're grade-A boys, I promise you that." Annie took mental note to brief the boys about potential fires of h.e.l.l if they acted out.

Like the sighting of a buoy in the middle of a rough sea, Annie spotted Lucas cutting through the crowd and advancing toward them. When he saw Lola, Lucas opened his eyes wide and, for Annie's benefit, simulated what seemed to be a miniature heart attack by covering his chest with both hands in a very French gesture signifying that he was love struck. He shook Lola's hand, introduced himself and began to speak to her and the children in English without the slightest hesitation or intimidation, and Annie breathed an immense sigh of relief. Lucas was going to save her a.s.s and make this whole thing possible.

In the car, Annie decided she was going to pretend that she was fine. She wasn't going to show anything to anyone, not even to Lucas. But she suspected Lucas knew all too well what was going through her brain, that old rascal. For one, she could not come up with anything clever to say and the van had fallen into an uncomfortable silence where all Annie could hear was the sound of her thoughts furiously galloping through her head. The van was beat up. A disgrace. There were crumbs and toys. Why had she not noticed before? Why didn't she listen to Lucas and let them take a d.a.m.ned cab? That way, the first thing Lola would have seen of her life was the house. She had never felt more intimidated.

Then the van was caught in a bad traffic jam and they were hopelessly stuck past a run down industrial suburb. Lia and Simon fell asleep in the back seat. Lola was still wearing her sungla.s.ses and she stared in silence at the suburb, which had never looked more sinister. In the cars surrounding them, lower human life forms chain-smoked and honked their horns. Annie suddenly hated Parisians and all things French. The rain, as on cue began to fall hard. Lucas turned on the windshield wipers, which stuttered and creaked and began to go up and down, trailing with them a puzzling black substance.

"How interesting," Lucas said dispa.s.sionately. "The rubber of the blades appears to be crumbling."

"Of course not."

"The windshield wipers have lost their elasticity, I believe."

Sure enough, the wiper blades were rapidly disintegrating into tar-looking residue that mixed with the rain on the windshield into nauseating muddy streaks. Lucas scooted down to see the road in the lower ten inches of windshield where the wipers halfway worked and began driving in that position. Did he have to do that?

She picked at her nails, removed dried dough, and rummaged her brain unsuccessfully for something to say, careful to avoid Lucas's side glances. Oh, she knew precisely what he was thinking. Lola had to be the most beautiful woman either of them had ever seen outside television. And Lola would never, ever, fit in her house.

Lucas scooted back up finally and looked at Lola in the rear view mirror. His voice breaking the silence like a giant fart. "Is this your first time in France?" he asked. Shut up, Annie thought. Shut up!

Lola tuned her face away from the window. "I've come here for work, but never more than a couple days at a time."

"What kind of work?" Annie asked, bravely turning around and looking at Lola.

"Modeling," she said. Annie's spirit dropped down to her ankles. Of course modeling! "I was much younger," Lola added. "I love Paris," she said, and removed the sungla.s.ses she had put back on. Her eyes were red and swollen. "Sorry about the gla.s.ses," Lola said. "I didn't want the kids to see me all emotional. I was fine in the airplane, but now, after the immigration and everything..."

Annie had never considered whether her children should or shouldn't see her emotional. Heck, if they saw her only when she wasn't emotional, they'd hardly get to see her at all. She thought of something to say. "Please don't look around; it's the Peripherique, the suburb! That will depress you even more. Wait till we get to my house. Everybody loves my house!"

"I'll do a scenic detour," Lucas declared.

"Lucas, they're exhausted," Annie protested weakly.

By the time Lola's daughter woke up, Lucas was driving past Place de la Concorde, rue de Rivoli, Jardin du Luxembourg, and the Louvre, and Annie didn't try to stop him. Lola said "Oh, Lia, look at the beautiful old buildings. The Eiffel Tower. This is it, Lia! We are in Paris!" Lia looked unimpressed, but on Lola's face was a touching expression of hopefulness and vulnerability. Whatever kind of woman Lola might be, Annie understood that she was before everything a mother. And in that single way, she and Lola were the same.

Lola felt drained of all strength. What had she done? But she needed to be strong as Annie introduced her boys who uncrossed their arms to shake her hand gravely. Simon showed no sign of waking up, so Lola carried him over her shoulder fast asleep from room to room, conscious of the three pairs of eyes that followed her every gesture and, of course, of Lia's anger at her. The way Annie's boys bombarded her with questions inquisition style and argued with each other confused her. Was she making a good impression on them? "Your baby, there," Laurent told her, "he's drooling all over your shoulder."

"So, Einstein," Maxence answered. "That's why he's a baby. Duh!"

"How tall are you?" Paul, the five-year-old, asked.

"That's rude to ask." Maxence said.

"You're rude," Paul responded.

"Put a lid on it, all of you," Annie said, and, to Lola's surprise, the three boys did.

Annie took Lola and Lia up the creaking stairs and made a dramatic pause, her hand on the k.n.o.b of a room. "Lola. I'm giving you the pink room, but I must warn you, it's not for the faint of heart." They entered a large room basking with warm light. Lola felt a bit of a shock at the sight of the almost entirely pink room. In the center was a smallish canopy bed with a powder pink gauze curtain. The window that opened to charming rooftops was draped with sumptuous candy-color striped silk. The only furniture was a miniature desk painted glossy red, an antique armoire lacquered in black, and an armchair covered with raspberry velvet. "I reupholstered it," Annie said, like an apology, "with vintage fabric. It's a bit like stepping inside a box of valentine chocolate, this room, no? But I had fun. It's my girly-girl room."

"I love it," Lola exclaimed, meaning it.

"The walls were a piece of work. Took me forever to mix the plaster evenly and get just the right shade."

"Did you make that?" Lia asked, pointing to slightly darker polka dots painted haphazardly on the walls.

"Not finished yet."

"And that?" Lia showed the gauze veil on the canopy, which was covered with miniature silk daisies.

"I used hot glue, stupidly, and the glue kept on melting the gauze. A real drag. In typical fashion, instead of stopping and getting the right glue, I continued. When I start being creative, I'm possessed."

"It's pretty," Lia said.

Lola took notice of this rare show of endors.e.m.e.nt. "This is charming and lovely," she insisted.

"Well, it's...me," Annie responded. "I bet you guys are accustomed to the best."

The children's room did not get the same response. The room was barely large enough for the two children's beds and the large trunk between them. The smallness of the room and the low, slanted ceiling gave it a tree house feel. The wallpaper added to the effect with a mossy shade of green adorned with rather gory hunting scenes, dead ducks, guns and scattered feathers.

"I'm not sleeping here," Lia exclaimed.

As on cue, Simon started whimpering.

"The room's plenty ugly, I must admit," Annie said matterof-factly. "It's got the previous owner's touch, and I never got around to decorating it."

Lola tried to put Simon down, but he climbed up her body like a small marsupial and rea.s.sumed his position. "Oh, it will be just fine," she said.

"I hate this place. I'm still not sleeping here," Lia said.

"They're starting to feel the jet lag," Lola apologized.

Annie looked at Lia. "Think of it as a blank canvas. We can make this room anything we want it to be. Sky's the limit."

Lia considered this. "Pink like the other one?"

"If you can convince my boys. They hate pink. I personally think it's the new black."

"I like purple, too."

"Only if you help me. I can't do it by myself," Annie responded.

Lola watched the exchange between her daughter and this perfect stranger with incomprehension and a maybe a tinge of jealousy.

How did this materialize?" Lucas cried out in delight an hour later when Annie placed a steaming dish of chicken lasagna and a large Salade Nicoise in the center of the dining room table. "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach," Annie said for Lola's benefit. She did feel a touch of pride at her planning skills. She had prepared the lasagna and washed the ingredients of the salad the day before, then warmed up one dish and tossed the other with homemade vinaigrette, and a meal was ready to eat within a half hour of arriving from the airport.

It did not get easier to find things to say during dinner. But thank heavens for Lucas who spoke at length about various American presidents, foreign policies, current art exhibitions in Paris that she had to not miss, the weather, and whatnot. Lola responded the best she could, eating with one hand, an impressive balancing act since Simon was back to sleep over her shoulder, but she spoke charmingly, making every effort to seem approachable and tried, unsuccessfully, to include her daughter in the conversation. Meanwhile, Paul and Laurent goofed off throughout dinner and Maxence wasn't making eye contact or speaking. But since Annie was herself having trouble making eye contact, could she blame him? Maxence was staring, and that was rude, but then again, what was she doing? She did not so much look at Lola as detail her inch by inch, goggling at her, counting the pores on the skin of her nose. She found no flaw, though she wondered about that mouth. Where did she get that mouth? Was it from an Angelina Jolie body part catalogue? Whoever had mouths like this? And her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were huge. Huge!

After dinner, Lola took Lia and Simon to bed and Annie walked Lucas to the door. "Your job here is done," she whispered to him. "Very well done. Please be back tomorrow at 6:00 AM sharp for further a.s.signments."

"Would 4:00 AM be too soon?" he whispered back. "As a matter of fact, I never want to leave this house again."

"Oh, she's that hot, huh?"

"There's something too perfect about her makeup, though," he said, whispering lower. "And her nails are strange."

"How strange?"

"They seem fake."

She laughed, "they are fake."

Lucas opened his eyes wide, "how can one fake nails?"

"Never mind. It's an American thing."

"Her lips," he said wistfully "are... p.o.r.nographic. And those b.r.e.a.s.t.s..."

"Always the poet," Annie laughed as she pushed him out of the house. She rounded up the boys and together they tiptoed upstairs, whispering and giggling, unclear as to how to navigate a house that already smelled and sounded different. In bed, peeking from under his blanket, Maxence said, "aren't they weird? I think they're really weird." She straightened the cover and moved the hair away from her nine-year-old's eyes. "What's so weird about them?"

"How do I know?" Maxence shrugged.

"How tall are they?" Paul wondered, his eyes closing already.

"It's time for bed," she said. She went from Maxence, to Laurent, and then to Paul for kisses and hugs.

"I love you a gazillion," Paul said in her neck.

"I love you a googolplex," Annie whispered back.

Annie went back downstairs to clean the dishes, relieved to be finally alone with her thoughts. She filled one of her j.a.panese cast iron teapots with water. Each time Johnny had come back from j.a.pan, it was with a teapot, each one a small piece of art. "For your collection," he would say.

"Why do you call it my collection? It's your collection," she remembered saying.

"It's my collection for you."

"I think I should come along the next time you go to j.a.pan. Choose a collection for myself."

"Next time? What's the big hurry?"

She put the teapot on the stove and began cleaning the dishes. Of course she never ended up going to j.a.pan, but that's hardly what bothered her. What bothered her is that she no longer had any desire to. Here she was, encouraging strangers to start over, but the fact of the matter was, she was stuck in her solitude, her circular thoughts that revolved around a single day less than three years ago. She rinsed a pan and moved it to the drying rack to the right of the sink.

"Your water is boiling," said Lola's voice.

Annie jumped. "Oh goodness, I didn't hear it. I didn't hear you come in."